[BRLTTY] linux screen driver and commands

[Mario Lang]

Samuel Thibault <samuel.thibault at ens-lyon.org> writes:

> While working on Linux kernel facilities for speech-based screen
> readers, I found an interesting possibility for driving brltty's speech
> with the PC keyboard, without having to patch the Linux kernel:
>
> - open /dev/input/event0 (provided by the evdev module)
> - call ioctl(fd, EVIOCGRAB, 1) on it: key presses stop being sent to the
>   linux virtual console: instead,
> - read(fd,buf,sizeof(struct input_event)) gets the key press event.
>
> This hence permits to grab key presses, which can then be used for
> driving speech reading etc., while the usual key presses can be
> simulated back via the uinput facility that we already implemented (the
> simulated device will appear as another /dev/input/event1 evdev file).

Yes, I already suggested this plan to Dave in a private mail
about a year ago or so.  It was especially interesting to some, since
there are braille displays out there which do not have any display-local
keys.  AFAICS, the only reason why it is not there yet is
because no one implemented it.  ITs truly simple though, at least
the key-forwarding part.

There is a problem though:  How do you figure out which
keyboard to grab?  I use a USB keyboard at times, and my PS/2
keyboard is still connected, so I definitely have two
system-console keyboards.  Actually, three, since I
use the Braille Star built-in PS/2 port, but that doesnt really
count.

> I will probably not work on this, but this should be enough material for
> somebody to do it :)

Ahhh, dejavu ! :)

-- 
CYa,
  Mario